Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Duncan Cross, and I would like to share with you a really simple tool for managing expectations with students and tutors, or in life generally, and it's called ICE. But the tool requires us to use active listening skills, so I'm embedding a challenge for you into this talk to see if you can see what I've done and what you can recognise. Can you see the films, the songs, the musicals, or the TV shows that I've referenced and how many times I do it? And I'd like to give you some context to my musings without making it sound like a Greek tragedy. But firstly, just to manage your expectations, happy hour comes a little later. So expectations are a really tricky thing to manage, whether it be with friends, family, in a health context, life generally, or in education, especially if you feel like you're playing by the rules of someone else's game. And these expectations are especially difficult to manage in higher education, as we see the relationship between a student, the institution, and a tutor or supervisor fraught with difficulties that can be extremely challenging for both. As a tutor, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want, and you as a student, well, you'll tell me what you want, what you really, really want. But there's a danger of being stuck in the middle, wondering what it is we should do, and not really managing either of our expectations of what the educational experience should really be. So from an academic standpoint, there's certainly a recognised need in the literature for further research around managing expectations, especially for doctoral research students. But there also appears to be a real reluctance to engage in a difficult dialogue or build relationships that are based on a shared management of expectations. But the tool I'm going to share with you isn't just for doctoral research students. In fact, it's been widely used across healthcare settings, and ICE stands for Ideas, Concerns, and Expectations. The ICE model has been used within clinical communication skills training since the 1980s, and comes from Becker and Maiman's health belief model, with the overarching idea that you can better help a patient if you know their ideas, concerns, and expectations about their health. So if you've recently been to the doctor and they've asked you what you think is wrong, they're trying to find out what you think you know, or don't know, or more importantly if you've just spent two days on Google searching for your symptoms. They then might ask you, are you worried, or why are you worried, and they're trying to see if you've had a family member with similar symptoms or a specific illness that you think you might have, or maybe if a health campaign has prompted you to come. And then finally they might ask you, what do you want from today? And they're trying to see if you're expecting to be referred to a specialist, whether you just want a prescription, or if you've come for a chat. So if we put this into the analogy of an iceberg, they're trying to understand the unseen that lies below the surface. They can then find out why you were there, why you're worried, and what you expect them to do as a health professional. They can then manage your expectations with regards to treatments, referrals, and perhaps the most important thing for me, how you feel when you walk away from that appointment. Unfortunately the model isn't always used effectually, partly because we have a disjointed relationship with only one side knowing the rules, which causes frustrations and might make you feel like a child when you leave that appointment. Sometimes the model is just used ineffectually, we don't get it. So you can go through the motions and ask the questions, but if you're walking through the park, ticking boxes, and don't actively listen to the answers and do something with the information, there's no point. All in all, the ICE model just becomes another brick in the wall that disrupts the development of rapport and good communication. So we've ICED them, but what next? So I bet you're wondering, well how does ICE fit with us in education? Well what I'd like to do is reshape your vision from the ICE book and think about the educational experience in my vision as a cocktail. Little glasses of fruity goodness that are filled with different ingredients to get us that perfect taste or experience. Sometimes they are just fruit juice and sometimes we add alcohol. That might enhance the flavor or it might lead to something more fiery or explosive. Arguably, the most important ingredient in all of our cocktails is ICE. So we can use the model in the same way that was described earlier. So I could say to a student or ask a student, where do you think you should be up to with your work? I'm getting their idea. I then might say, are there any challenges or barriers to you submitting your work? And I'm trying to find out their concerns. My last question could be, what are you going to do from this meeting? And I'm finding out their expectation. And from this, we as tutors get a good sense of where the student is and where we can tell them what they need to do. But there's a real danger that we're taking a mechanistic approach that doesn't really manage anybody's expectations. We impose our expectations on the student and we've ICED them. So we're not managing them, we're dismissing them and their expectations. There's two things, we're dismissing them and their expectations. And effectively, we might leave them on the rocks. And potentially, the other thing that we might do is just leave the student to find out what happens to solid water when it gets warm. We can leave the student with just ice, there's nothing in there, and we leave them alone for three years, or maybe more, and we find out what happens. So question, isn't it always 50-50 in relationships? If we use ICED to structure a conversation so that I, as a tutor, understand where the student is coming from and the student understands where the tutor is coming from, we can start to manage our mutual expectations. It's not just about me asking a question and managing your expectations. This is about shared understanding and managing both of our expectations. So we need to reframe our questions to we. Where do we think you should be up to with your work? We're getting the idea of both parties. Do we think there are any challenges or barriers to submitting? We're understanding the concerns. And finally, the expectation, well, where do we go from here? And effectively, we've asked, would you like ice? We could use another example with these questions. So if you go back to your first year at university or of your studies, the questions I could be asking is, what do you think a degree is? Or what do we think a degree is? What are we worried about for your journey? And where do we expect you to end up? But if we want to take this further and really manage our expectations regarding learning, we need to take it further. Sometimes your expectations need to be shaken. And we're going to ask really challenging questions to help us work out the plan. For both sides, not just the students. Sometimes they need to be stirred. So we might be seeking a little clarification or a gentle nudge in the right direction, or a different direction. And occasionally, we need to crush our expectations. Does anybody remember this? Some of you do? You're laughing? I'm going to avoid the niceness. This isn't as easy as I thought. We'll leave that for now. And we might crush our expectations because they might be unreasonable, or we're so far apart in our thinking that we need to put it back together again. In each of these scenarios, though, we have to remember it's about us. Not I. Not you. It's us. And it's imperative that you think about how do we both want to feel when we walk away from those conversations. The most important thing in all of these conversations really is that we stop, collaborate, and listen. Because ICE is a really easy tool that we can use to mutually manage student and tutor expectations and share our thoughts and decision-making processes. And importantly, it doesn't need to be the tutor that starts these conversations. So for those of you who remembered or are keeping track, there are 12 intentional cultural references in this talk. But really, what you want to remember is, how would you like your ICE? Shaken or stirred? Thank you.